Stay strong and good luck east coasters…

This sucks. Hurricane Sandy. For those that have no idea what even a “mild” hurricane can hold, it’s not fun. I’m so, so, so very far from an expert on dealing with hurricanes, but take it from this mid-westerner, the situation out east ain’t pretty.

Holly and I were living in a small apartment in New Jersey in 1999 and as hearty Midwesterners we’ve dealt with blizzards, tornadoes, flooding and all other kinds of natural disasters except hurricanes. According to Wikipedia, the little town we lived in had the highest rainfall of the state from our sole hurricane experience: Hurricane Floyd at 13.34 inches. This caused excessive flooding in the area, resulted in our apartment in being evacuated, resulted in a fireman rescue at an adjacent apartment that was essentially an island from a short-circuited meandering stream, and generally wrecked complete and utter havoc to our community and the area we worked. It just rained, and rained and rained. Now add hurricane type winds inland and you get some idea on what damage this can cause. I saw a high-rise crane snap in a news feed tonight.

Good luck, stay strong and hope the cleanup goes well to those out there on the east coast. We’ve got friends and family already long without power.